It isn’t a myth or an overstatement to say that the hardest thing to see in college baseball is an African-American ballplayer. The decline almost makes a triple play look common.

In 2007, less than seven percent of all NCAA Division I baseball players were African-American, and the numbers are expected to decline for 2008. The comparisons to basketball, where 57 percent of D-I players were African-American, and football (43 percent) are mind-boggling.

There are a grand total of seven African-American players at the five pre-eminent college baseball teams in Southern California – two at Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State, and one each at USC, UCLA and Pepperdine. Considering UCLA gave us Jackie Robinson, USC is located in the inner-city and Long Beach has a long history of producing outstanding African-American athletes, it’s a regrettable local statistic.

But hardly novel. Two of college sports’ historical Black universities – Bethune-Cookman (Daytona, Fla.) and Southern University (Baton Rouge, La.) – are in town to compete in the first Urban Invitational Baseball Tournament with USC and UCLA this weekend at the MLB Urban Youth Academy in Compton, and their rosters reflect the dearth of African-American college baseball players, too.

Bethune-Cookman is predominantly Latino, with 14 players on its roster from Puerto Rico, along with five white players. Last season, a scout at a B-C game at their home field, Jackie Robinson Ballpark, counted just seven African-Americans in the B-C dugout.

Southern coach Roger Cador says his team is a veritable rainbow coalition with six white players and several Latinos.

Many of the historically Black universities actively recruit whites because, like everyone else, they want to win and the pool of African-American players is shallow.

Cador laments the declining numbers and is excited about opportunities like this weekend to create more interest in baseball on all levels for African-Americans. But he also understands the forces of sociology.

“You can nail it with one word, opportunity,” Cador said. “There have been more opportunities to find other sports within the Black community at a young age.

“Back in the ’50s and ’60s, (youth) baseball was king. You had little league programs and people in the community who would foster play, even if it meant the coach driving a station wagon and picking players up to take them to the field.

“We’ve lost that kind of ally over time. Now kids look at basketball and football as their best opportunities, and basketball is the sport where you have guys, slicker guys, organizing summer leagues and travel teams.”

Cador agreed that Jackie Robinson didn’t just open the door to baseball in 1947 when he joined the Dodgers. Opportunities swelled in the NFL and NBA. Barriers in southern colleges fell in the early ’70s.

“We don’t sign many African-American baseball players from Louisiana. Isn’t that awful?” Cador said. “We’re a football state, and growing in basketball. There are good athletes here, but it’s tough to get them to think about baseball.”

The MLB Urban Youth Academy and the RBI (Reviving Baseball in the Inner-City) programs were designed to reacquaint inner-city kids with baseball, and the Compton facility is sparkling. There are other RBI programs and academies in major cities like Houston and Atlanta, but the process of culling talent has been slow.

Some critics say the programs are geared too much toward teens, overlooking that the gap beings to grow at much younger ages. The MLB investment, while notable, still doesn’t compare to the investment major league teams make in the Caribbean and Latin America.

In 2007, only eight percent of players on opening day rosters were African-American. Two teams did not have a single player and seven others had just one. That was the lowest percentage since 1959, which was the year that every MLB team finally integrated.

In 1975, one out of every four MLB player was African-American. In 2007, the numbers had flipped; one in five MLB players were Latino.

“I think part of it is that college sports is so big now that the good athlete isn’t encouraged to play more than one sport,” Cador said. “Football and basketball coaches get fired, so they’re not going to let their best players find their way to a baseball field in the offseason.”

It’s also cultural. History is not of great importance to young athletes. It’s been 60 years since Robinson made history and more than 35 years since racial barriers broke at colleges like Alabama and Mississippi. When African-American kids turn on ESPN and watch basketball and football, there are multiple role models. Not so much in baseball, where the game’s headliner, Barry Bonds, has had an asterisk attached to his name.

“I tell my stories and do my speeches,” Cador said. “I tell them about Black kids who weren’t allowed to play until coaches saw them, and then the coaches would say ‘Look at that Cuban run.’ I tell them about being Dale Murphy’s minor league roommate when I was with the Braves, and that they put us together because I was Black and he was Mormon and read his bible all the time. There are all kinds of discrimination foolishness.

“We have to be realistic. Kids don’t care about history. There aren’t enough grandfathers around to tell them stories. Kids care about what they see. If I get two or three who have a sense of appreciation for the way things were, it’s a good year. All we can really do is have events like this and open kids in those communities to the idea of playing baseball.”

The tournament begins tonight with Southern playing at UCLA (6 p.m.) and Bethune-Cookman at USC (7 p.m.). Saturday, the scene shifts to the Youth Academy (901 E. Artesia, in Compton), where games will be held at 5 and 8 p.m. and televised on ESPN2. Recording star Jeffrey Osborne will sing the national anthem before the first game and the USC and renown Southern marching bands will have a battle-of-the-bands concert between games.

Bethune-Cookman and Southern then meet Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Academy.